I have had my cell phone service with Cingular/AT&T since 2002. I have been quite happy with them in what has been a mostly pain free relationship. I chose them initially because as a UNC student I got some nice perks, like 200 free Text messages and some free Web access.
When we moved to Nashville last year, Nat and I renewed our contract with ATT by getting two Motorola Razr V3 phones. I got a black one and Nat a pink one. Mine has been working just fine. Nat's developed a software glitch back in April where the phone would not power up properly and would issue some weird screen error (think DOS prompt with lots of numbers). I called ATT and they nicely issued a replacement phone at no cost to us. The phone came in, I added the SIM card (which contains all your phone numbers, identifies the phone as yours, etc.), popped the battery in, put the battery cover on and we were off. I mailed the defective phone off and we were off.
About 2-3 months ago, Nat noticed that if her phone ran out of battery or if she merely turned the phone off, the keypad would light up when you tried to turn it back on, but the phone would not boot up. I then figured out that if you took the battery off AND the SIM card out and put them back in, the phone would boot up. Because I was lazy, I didn't call ATT to tell them the phone was misbehaving until this afternoon, and the response was not to my liking.
In short, their warranty people told me that even though the replacement phone was issued only over 3 months ago, that the one year warranty with the phone only applies to the first phone. Unluckily for me, that warranty expired July 14th of this year, or 12 days ago. As such, they told me they would not be able to issue a replacement phone. I then asked to talk to customer service, and after being transfered to the wrong "market", I was able to talk to the right person. After I bitched their service out, he talked to his supervisor and gave me 2 options:
1. Get a bottom of the line Nokia phone for $29.
2. Pay $79 for a new phone.
In other words, even though ATT issued 2 DEFECTIVE phones to us in a period of a year and 12 days, they are askign us to pay for a new phone? Really? Is this how they treat loyal customers of 6 years that have never missed a payment? Whatever happened to taking responsibility for your actions, or in this case for issuing 2 defective pieces of equipment? I am outraged that we have had 2 defective phones in a period of year and that the company that issued them expects ME to pay for it.
I cannot wait for out contract to be up next summer, because when it does, I think I will be looking somewhere else for my cell phone business.
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2 comments:
This completely stinks. We just had phone issues with Sprint (the phone could no longer receive signal), and similarly, they were just barely over a year old.
I had been generally happy with ATT until this. I just don't understand the policy of sending us a refurbished phone that does not carry the same warranty than the original.
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